


But I'll Be Seeing You

by cravetherose



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, Reunions, SSR Confidential
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24664033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cravetherose/pseuds/cravetherose
Summary: For the rest of her life, Peggy could remember the exact moment Howard Stark had called to tell her he had finally, really done it: he had actually found Steve.
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Edwin Jarvis, Peggy Carter & Howard Stark, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 13
Kudos: 69
Collections: SSR Confidential 2020





	But I'll Be Seeing You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roboticonography](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboticonography/gifts).



### 1949

For the rest of her life, Peggy could remember the exact moment Howard Stark had called to tell her he had finally, really done it: he had actually found Steve. It was like a [millefiore glass paperweight](https://www.christies.com/features/Paperweights-collecting-guide-7207-1.aspx) she always kept on her desk, which Angie had given her, and while normally her surroundings were somewhat Spartan, she liked being able to pick it up and look at the fantastic, fragile patterned circles and swirls and coloured shapes that could have been otherworldly flowers or underwater corals, whenever she wished. She had been thoroughly exasperated with Howard -- she _had_ thought he might finally have stopped disappearing on binges for weeks -- and could almost still smell the small but sharp tang of sulfur in the air as she lit yet another cigarette before trying his number yet again. The line had been engaged, and she had not quite slammed down the receiver. But he had been trying to call her, simultaneously, so the phone rang as soon as the connection was closed, startling her. Her hand was still on the receiver and she lifted it back up and said "Stark?" into it. _"Finally,_ I've been trying to find you for -- "

"It's Steve," Howard said, and she felt her heart throb painfully in her chest. 

"I found him. Peg, I found him, I finally -- "

 _"Found_ him? His -- " She ground out the cigarette in her heavy glass ashtray and resisted the urge to light another one immediately. "His body?" she said more calmly. "Was he in -- "

"No, listen, _listen,_ Peg, I'm telling you -- it's _Steve._ He's not dead. He went into the ice -- he's been there all this time. He's _frozen._ He's not dead -- I got a doc who says he thinks we can thaw him out, you know, like a one hundred percent grade A American beefsteak -- "

"Howard," Peggy said, in a weak voice she could barely recognize as her own, "if this is yet another one of your pranks, it is in the very worst possible taste." Her hands were shaking badly and she used both of them to hold onto the phone, propping one elbow on her desk. 

"No, listen -- okay, wait, will ya believe _Jarvis?_ He's right here. He _was_ right here, goddammit, where did he -- " Peggy automatically moved the receiver away from her ear as Howard shouted, "JARVIS! WHERE -- oh, there you are. Polishing the _silver,_ seriously? Right _now?_ You were right, she won't listen to me, would you please tell her I'm not making the worst ever joke -- " Jarvis must have said something about his beefsteak crack, because Howard shouted with laughter and said something ending with " -- prime," and then Peggy heard Edwin's voice, calm and crisp as ever: "Agent Carter."

"Mister Jarvis," she replied, already feeling better. "Do tell me what has actually happened, other than Mister Stark apparently losing all touch with reality."

"No indeed, ma'm," he said with his typical edged courtliness, just on the edge of being ironic. "Mister Stark is as _in touch_ with reality as he ever is. I was there, with him." He paused, only briefly, but Peggy held her breath. "Captain Rogers....does not appear to have died, but rather to have gone into a kind of suspended animation, is what the doctors have informed me. His heart continued beating, very slowly, and he was possibly in a state of artificial hibernation." Another pause, longer, this time. 

"Agent Carter....Peggy....Captain America, Steve Rogers -- _your_ Steve Rogers -- is alive."

And that was where the crystalline moment ended, for Peggy; she could remember dropping the phone in a daze, no longer able to hold onto anything, and Howard and Jarvis arriving from the city soon afterwards -- Howard racing over in his ridiculous sports car he had shipped over from Europe, Jarvis driving himself and Ana in the new Ford Tudor Howard had bought them (claiming it was really for him own use, Jarvis chauffered him about so often). Jarvis's words became mixed up with the giant blaring newspaper headlines, nearly as large as the ones announcing the end of the war, CAPTAIN AMERICA FOUND! and "CAP" ROGERS PUT ON ICE and BROOKLYN BOY BROUGHT HOME and all the rest of them. Howard kept every single one of them, including the evening and overseas editions, in one of his giant scrapbooks. Steve was alive, but deeply unconscious ("just like Sleeping Beauty," Howard had said), still breathing, his heart still beating, as it apparently had been for years, buried deep in the Arctic circle. ("Same damn thing happened with a turtle heart," Howard said cheerily, "after dissecting it, some kids put the heart in a school refrigerator, and -- " Peggy had told him that she had grown up with three brothers, and he had to do better than that.) But even after he woke up, and saw her and knew her, that one moment out of time stayed out of time -- it remained as blindingly clear and shocking as when she first experienced it, preserved -- saved -- as Steve had been, in her heart.

She felt as if that moment of revelation, stinging and shocking as an ice bath, had stayed around her, like a shield of glass, up until she had actually seen him. As Howard had cynically predicted, it turned out that in the post-war military, a dead Captain America was much easier to deal with than a live Steve Rogers. They couldn't keep Steve a secret; nobody had ever been able to, or at least not for long. But Howard had somehow rented out an entire floor of the Manhattan French Hospital, and after long, tense arguments that kept collapsing, generals and bureaucrats alike had finally agreed that Steve could recover in privacy and quiet, not on a military base ("a lab," Howard clarified) or anywhere public. Howard put out the word to the tabloids that a famous crime boss was recovering in the hospital from being attacked in a love nest he had set up for a famous actress ("ah, autobiography," Jarvis sighed). As for what would happen after he woke up, depending on what he could do (and what he _would_ do, Peggy thought privately) -- well, they would see. For now, they were all waiting.

Peggy hadn't wanted Steve to wake up in a hospital room -- she knew how much he'd hated that, when he was young, and how hard he'd fought to leave any sickbed as soon as possible -- so she'd had a recovery room fixed up for him instead. It was still obviously a room _in_ a hospital (for one thing, in every hospital you could never escape the smell of antiseptic no matter how many flowers were brought in to mask it), but it had a regular bed, with a bedside table with a regular lamp, a radio, and a wide window to let in the sunlight, with a slice of a city view. He hadn't fully woken up yet, but the doctors didn't want to force him into full consciousness, and his vital signs were strong and stable, so they had agreed a less clinical setting would be all right, for now.

She had wanted him to first see her as she'd striven to be during the war, with perfect victory curls and bullet-proof lipstick. She tried to check his status herself once a day, even if sometimes she was only able to peek through the small window set in the door. She brought what unclassified files she could to work on in a room next to his, and ignored what was sent up from the hospital cafeteria until Jarvis interrupted her unconscious fast, with plain brown paper bags holding edible miracles from Ana: beef goulash, soup made from four kinds of fish and bright red with paprika, a thick potato stew made even thicker with flour, sour cream and melted cheese. But, one late night, she had spilled a bit of sauce from a bowl of chicken paprikás on her skirt, and even though the fabric was old and pilled, she quickly walked to the hall bathroom in order to take it off and properly sponge out the stain in privacy. Her heels sounded as loud as horses' hooves on a frozen street as she headed back, and then slowed and finally stopped in front of Steve's room. She pushed open the door -- surely it couldn't matter, not this late, just once -- and stood just inside it, looking at him. 

"Hello, my darling," she whispered, and his eyes opened.

She could tell immediately that he was still _Steve,_ somehow -- the same man looked out behind from those ocean-blue eyes -- but his gaze was clouded and confused. He put a hand to his head, and murmured, "Dizzy...." as if to himself. He saw her, but she couldn't tell if he knew who she was. "Where am I?" he whispered.

Peggy steeled herself, in case his memory, or his memories of _her_ at any rate, were impaired, or gone. "It's all right," she said quietly, but she couldn't keep from smiling. "You're in a recovery room, in New York City -- French Hospital, in Manhattan." She bit back _Do you know who I am?_ or _Do you know who_ you _are?_ She nodded at the pitcher of ice water by his bed. "Would you like a drink of water?"

"That sounds wonderful," he said with real feeling, and so she carefully poured him half a glass, with not too much ice, intending to bring it to his lips. But -- _oh, Steve_ \-- instead he tried to take it from her; his grasp was too weak and he dropped the glass, and she felt a small shower of water on one foot through her stocking, but luckily she wasn't cut. She stayed still, but Steve flinched back like a hurt animal. The noise seemed to clear his mind, but left him vulnerable, and he gasped: _"Peggy?_ Are you -- is this a dream?"

She felt infinite sorrow, sharp as a blade, enter her heart. "Oh, Steve, no," she said, her voice still quiet. "It's not a dream. You're really here -- so am I. But -- Steve, you've been...." She tried choosing between truths. "Asleep, or something like it. After you crashed the plane, into the ice -- "

"How long?" he demanded, already sounding more like his old self. She took a deep breath.

"Almost five years." She waited, but he sank back on his pillow, his eyes going glassy again. "Steve. Are you all right -- ?"

"Yeah," he whispered, "yeah. I just....I had a date."

The leap of joy in her heart was much worse than the pity and sadness had been a moment earlier, and she sat down on his bed without thinking. "You're late," she whispered back, and both of them tried to smile at each other, ignoring the wetness already on their cheeks. He raised his hand, trying to find hers, and she laced her fingers through his. His grip was already almost painfully strong, but she held on harder.

"Do I get -- that dance?" His voice burred, and he cleared his throat and said much more strongly -- he was recovering by the minute -- "Even if I'm....late. At least I'm not.... _the_ late -- "

"Oh, that's terrible. -- Didn't your mother tell you not to keep a lady waiting too long?" she mock-scolded.

"She did. But I figure you're a lady who would wait for the -- right partner...." His eyes filled, showing a different feeling this time, and he turned his head and angrily scrubbed at his face with his other hand, avoiding her gaze. 

"Oh, Steve," she said, "I would -- I did -- Steve....so much time has passed, the world has changed. We can none of us go back. But all we can do now is our best, and we can -- start over."

"Five years," he said in wonder. "I just -- what if I wasn't here, now? What if I hadn't woken up, and I just kept sleeping, on and on, under -- and everyone died, and I didn't even know -- even -- " 

He clamped his jaw shut on his own words, withdrawing into himself, but she said quickly, "No, no, don't think of it -- it's all right, now, you're safe. You're here. You're awake now, I promise. The war's over, Steve. We -- you -- can go home." 

She kissed him impulsively, and felt him kissing her back, all his defenses dropping, his mouth soft and loose under hers, his arms going around her. She kicked off her heels, mentally damned her stockings to hell, and swung her legs up onto the bed beside him, to hold him. He was silent but she felt his hot tears on her neck, his body tense, as if they were being wrung out of him. "I'm sorry, darling -- I'm afraid I've rather mucked this up. You've lost so much time, it's true. But Howard got you back -- you're home."

"I'm home," he repeated, almost in a sob, and lifted his head to kiss her again. "We're home." "Home," she repeated after him, nodding, and smiling and crying at the same time. Over his shoulder, in the black square of the window, no stars were visible; but the light filtering in from the hallway was dimmed, and she could still make out the moon.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Billie Holiday's 1944 version of "I'll Be Seeing You": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l44_n60QQ8
> 
> _I'll find you in the morning sun  
>  And when the night is new  
> I'll be looking at the moon  
> But I'll be seeing you...._


End file.
